Follow the Texture Road

I made this for Tyler so we could work on expanding his vocabulary and on using words to describe things... but he wasn't so much into that!  Although he wasn't into the verbal aspect of this activity, I thought I'd share what we did anyways because your child might enjoy following the texture road and talking about it!  Maybe 4.5 year old's are too cool for this type of stuff?!  Or perhaps, he is just not a foot guy!  : )  Here is what we did: 

First, I gathered several materials that were different shapes and textures: stryrofoam, felt, wooden sticks, feathers, pom poms, dry noodles, and shredded paper. 

 Second, I glued them onto a large piece of butcher paper that we use on our easel from Ikea. 

Third, I had Tyler walk across the texture road a few times to get a feel for it all.

And lastly, I asked him to describe how each texture looked and felt.  The felt was "orange and soft."  The wooden sticks were "long, hard, colorful."  The feathers were "soft and tickly."  So you get the idea; that's pretty much what all I got from him and then he was ready to move on! 
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As I was drafting this blog post, I noticed in my blog feed that Teach Preschool just wrote a post titled Pizza Box Textured Puzzles; check it out for a different activity involving textures!

If you are focusing on building vocabulary with this activity, check out this great book that is all about texture!